My generation did not "kick the habit" because for every "We Mind Very Much If You Smoke" jingle, we had another one about coming a long way. Those acoustic memories intermingle with memories of friends and loved ones whose lives were extinguished by the tobacco industry.
There is a global movement underway toward graphic warnings about disease on tobacco packaging. What follows is my letter to the editor of a North Carolina newspaper.
Sunday, May 31st is the World Health Organization’s annual World No Tobacco Day. This year’s theme is the implementation of pictorial warning labels on tobacco products. Other countries, including India, Canada, the United Kingdom and Brazil, already place pictures of diseased patients on tobacco packages, making the health risks of tobacco use hard for the consumer to overlook. The United States lags behind. Currently textual warnings are all that are in place on tobacco products.
Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the world. I witnessed this firsthand at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, where I diagnosed thousands of cases of disease caused by tobacco.
World No Tobacco Day is an ideal time for all individuals to consider their own possible contributions to the WHO’s MPOWER initiatives to “Monitor tobacco use and the policies to prevent it; Protect people from tobacco smoke; Offer people help to quit tobacco use; Warn about the dangers of tobacco; Enforce bans on tobacco, advertising, promotion and sponsorship; Raise taxes on tobacco.”
Let us act responsibly and proactively for the benefit of our country’s children by advocating for picture warnings on tobacco products.
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